Iberian & Latin American Visual Culture Group

Colnaghi merges with ARTES sponsors Coll & Cortés

ARTES is delighted to announce that Jorge Coll and Nicolas Cortés of Coll & Cortés (London & Madrid) have become partners with Konrad Bernheimer of Colnaghi.

Coll & Cortés have very generously sponsored the ARTES scholarship and bursary awards since their inception in 2012 and we wish them every success in their new venture.

Nicolas Cortés & Jorge Coll

Konrad Bernheimer

The new firm will continue to trade as Colnaghi with Konrad Bernheimer remaining as Chairman, while Coll & Cortés will continue to operate in Madrid. Early next year Colnaghi will move from their current premises in Old Bond Street to a new, larger, custom-built gallery in James’s and there will be an inaugural exhibition at TEFAF Maastrichtin March 2016, followed later in the year by one at their new premises. Colnaghi’s extensive library and archives, currently stored at Windmill Hill on the Waddesdon Estate in Buckinghamshire, will also move to the new 26 Bury Street building.

Coll & Cortés
Coll & Cortés was founded in 2005 by Jorge Coll and Nicolás Cortés. Launched with a gallery on Calle Justiniano in Madrid, the business expanded at the end of 2012 by opening a gallery in London’s Mayfair. Since their inception Coll & Cortés has aimed to source and sell the best examples of European paintings and sculptures, as well as arts from the Spanish-speaking world. Coll & Cortés has presented a number of exhibitions and publications focused on areas of art history that may have been overlooked, but which are rich in quality and cultural significance. Their first two exhibitions, Masters of Baroque (2005) and The Time of Painting (2007), were scholarly surveys of painting in Spain from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Their following exhibition in 2009 addressed polychrome wood sculpture and was timed to coincide with The Sacred Made Real, a seminal exhibition on the same subject held at The National Gallery in London. The Mystery of Faith presented a turning point both in the recognition of the Coll & Cortés gallery but also in the appeal – both aesthetic and commercial – of Spanish polychrome wood sculpture. Their fourth project was dedicated to the arts of the Spanish-speaking world in all its forms, from painting to sculpture, tapestries to furniture, silver to ivories. This survey was aimed not only at promoting individual works of art but also at gathering and publishing the most recent scholarly research on this highly specialised subject. Their recent publications on artists including Leone and Pompeo Leoni, Guglielmo della Porta, Pedro de Mena and Guercino were further attempts at presenting the finest objects on the market with the most up-to-date scholarship. Their current publication Granada: The Mystic Baroque is a brief study of the city’s rich cultural heritage. The first part is a survey of its many museums, churches and fraternities, as well as of the paintings and sculptures within them. The second includes detailed investigations of seventeen baroque sculptures carved by the leading Granadiño artists broadly active between 1620 and 1740. The Coll & Cortés gallery has proudly been exhibiting at The European Fine Art Fair, Maastricht, since 2012, Spring Masters, New York, since 2014, and London Art Week since 2014. The gallery also participated at Frieze Masters in 2013 and 2014.

ColnaghiFounded in 1760, Colnaghi is one of the most renowned and venerable art galleries in the world. A print publisher and dealer in the 18th century, Colnaghi moved to Pall Mall in 1786 becoming the destination of choice for collectors and, by the early 19th century, being appointed Printsellers to the Prince Regent, later George IV. The company’s prominent position saw them work with celebrated artists including John Constable, for whom they arranged the exhibition of ‘The Hay Wain’ at the Paris Salon in 1824 where the painting was awarded the Gold Medal. From the late 19th century, Colnaghi assumed a dominant position in the field of Old Masters, pioneering the market during the early 20th century as American millionaires acquired European masters from aristocratic collections and built the foundations of their great institutions. In 1911, the firm moved to New Bond Street, and in 1930, it oversaw the sale by The Soviet Government of some of the greatest masterpieces from The Hermitage, the bulk of which were acquired by Mr. Andrew Mellon and are now found in The National Gallery of Art, Washington. In 1940, the company moved to Old Bond Street and in 1970, Colnaghi was modernised after it was acquired by The Hon. Jacob (now Lord) Rothschild, who rejuvenated the business, appointing a number of young Directors and encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation. In 2002, Colnaghi was acquired by Konrad Bernheimer, a long established art dealer from Munich whose family had been purveyors of antiques and works of art to the Royal House of Bavaria in the 19th century. He was soon joined by Katrin Bellinger, a renowned specialist dealer of Old Master drawings. Colnaghi continues to be recognised as one of the greatest and most successful art galleries, and builds its longstanding tradition of selling works of art to international museums including, in the last 5 years, to Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Princely Collections of Lichtenstein, among others.